A leading, award winning, Chartered Financial Planner based in the North-West, currently requires an experienced and Diploma Qualified Paraplanner to join it's friendly and vibrant team.
Paraplanner Job Purpose
The Technical Support Team is primarily responsible for producing suitability reports for clients on behalf of its advisers. The team is made up of paraplanners and administrators:
Paraplanners are referred to as Technical Support Analysts for client facing documents, carry out the technical research and analysis needed to produce the detailed client facing reports that explain to a client what course of action the adviser recommends and why this is suitable for them.
Paraplanning Administrators (PPA), referred to as Technical Support Administrators for client facing documents, support the Paraplanners by gathering the relevant information from product providers and physically preparing the reports for the advisers in advance of client meetings/to issue in the post..
Paraplanner Principal Accountabilities
The role of the Paraplanner is to collect, analyse and present data on behalf of the advisers.
The Paraplanner deals mainly with analysis and presentation and is responsible for oversight of the work done by the PPA. The Paraplanner writes reports but is not simply a report writer. A good Paraplanner needs an understanding of the advisory process and will check and challenge where more suitable solutions might exist. They will be able to analyse existing assets quickly and accurately, based on the data collected by a PPA, to identify if better client outcomes can be achieved in alternative products.
An exceptional Paraplanner will identify procedural points of failure, developing and adding to existing processes to improve the efficiency of the team.
Paraplanner Main Responsibilities
- Provide analysis, detailed research of funds and providers, carry out calculations, build cashflow, report writing and product recommendations for presentation to clients and/or reports for sending to clients.
- Provide all advice within a strict ethical and compliance framework and under guidance from the Team Leader
- Provide technical support and back up to Advisers and the Sales Support function.
- Complete portfolio reviews and rebalancing requests
- Use knowledge of financial planning to question and challenge proposed solutions.
- Draft workflows and trading workflows off the back of the recommendations being made in the suitability report.
- Deal with client and insurer queries to completion via the telephone or in writing
- Ensure that quality assessments (peer review) have been carried out, evidenced, and signed off accordingly.
- Ensure Intelligent Office is kept up to date with clients and portfolio details as necessary and required.
- To ensure that personal level of authority and responsibility is clearly delineated. This should incorporate a full understanding of procedures and their relevance together with any changes in Compliance and/or the financial services marketplace as required from time to time.
- Commit to continuous personal development and retain supporting records for inspection upon request by the Team Leader
- Manage own workflow position and provide updates on to the Team Leader
Paraplanner Essential requirements
- Qualified to or studying towards Diploma level qualification (Level 4) in Financial Planning
- Excellent understanding of the Financial Planning process
- Excellent understanding of the main financial products and the data required by paraplanners and advisers to analyse their ongoing suitability for clients.
- Able to work within defined business processes, as part of a team and individually on own initiative
- Ability to achieve agreed outcomes without supervision, prioritising and planning own workload.
- Excellent interpersonal skills
- Ability to produce detailed and accurate work consistently to a high standard.
- Good IT skills (notably MS Word and Excel, but also able to learn third party software such as Intelligent Office, FE Analytics and Selectapension)
- Desirable requirements
- Desire to achieve Chartered status (Level 6)